At the Nigerian Resource Justice Conference 2023 hosted by Social Action and Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) on December 18, 2023 in Abuja Nnimmo Bassey, Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), in a paper, said a reliance on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in climate negotiations promotes climate injustice. PAUL OMOROGBE brings excerpts:
The reliance on NDCs locks in inequality and injustice in the entire climate negotiation process. With this understanding, my initial conclusion is that COPs conducted on an unjust basis will continue to yield hollow outcomes that at best scratch the surface of the climate crisis.
The foundation for voluntary emissions cut by nations was laid in the Copenhagen Accord (2009) and consolidated in the Paris Agreement (2015) under what is known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). This voluntary mechanism essentially blunted the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), a cardinal justice principle of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UNFCCC.
Whereas in the past, rich, industrialized and polluting nations were grouped as Annex 1 nations and had binding emissions reduction requirements, under the NDCs, there are no binding obligations. Nations simply have to do what is convenient for them to do and report back on what they have done to the Conference of Parties (COP). Such submissions were made for the global stocktake at the United Nations Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai this year.
Voluntary emissions reduction can work in a situation where there is no crisis and no urgency for action. However, the world has already progressed from global warming to global heating and the prognosis for the future shows very dire situations. The evidence of the trend is presented in the various Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports as well as in United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Emissions Gap Report (EGR).
The EGR issued just before COP28 showed that rather than reducing, global greenhouse emissions increased by 1.2 per cent from 2021 to 2022 to reach a new record of 57.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. In addition, an aggregation of the NDCs proposed by nations showed that the world was heading for a 2.5 to 2.9C temperature increase above pre-industrial level. At that temperature level, there will be a spike in freak weather events and the overall conditions will make parts of the world uninhabitable.
The reliance on NDCs locks in inequality and injustice in the entire climate negotiation process. With this understanding, my initial conclusion is that COPs conducted on an unjust basis will continue to yield hollow outcomes that at best scratch the surface of the climate crisis.
Fossil notice
COP28 has three significant accomplishments, but around each are bubbles of uncertainties and loopholes. The three highlights are the adoption of Loss and Damage Fund mechanism, the agreement to triple renewables capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030, and the agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy.
Yet, in all, the real winners are the army of fossil fuels lobbyists and the petrostates. After kicking and screening for decades, the COP finally agreed to acknowledge that burning of fossil fuels must end. The phrase of transitioning from fossil fuels for energy was so carefully crafted it leaves an ocean-wide space for the fossil fuel industries to keep on prospecting for, and extracting the resources.
The restriction of the open-ended transition to renewable energy gives the industry the space to keep drilling for production of plastics, petrochemicals and diverse products. In other words, that celebrated clause does give a lifeline for the petroleum civilisation to trudge on.
Carbon wordsmiths
The wordsmiths of the COP play with the imagination of the world and it is time to wake up to this fact. At COP26 the phrase “phase down” instead of “phase out” was introduced. A phasing down of coal, for example, simply indicates there would be some efforts to tinker with production and consumption volumes of the hydrocarbon. It does not by any stretch suggest halting dependence of the dirty energy source.
A lot of energy was spent at COP27 and COP28 to push for the “phase out” language in the outcome documents. The draft outcome document of COP28 particularly gave a number of options on how the language for “phasing out fossil fuels” could be couched.
While negotiators and politicians tried to wrap their heads around the clause, which would remain a clear ending of the fossil fuels age, the wordsmiths came out with “transitioning from fossil fuels in energy.”
So, there is the phase down, phase out and then a partial transition. Strikingly, the document also highlights the continued role of transition fuels―a clear reference to fossil gas.
Carbon speculators
Whereas there was no agreement on adopting a UN sanctioned mechanism for carbon trading, aspects of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement opened the floodgates for carbon capture and utilisation and storage, carbon dioxide removals and variants of geoengineering.
Carbon capture introduces the notion of pollution abatement – an interesting term. While it is clear that the best action is to stop pollution at source, various COPs say keep polluting, but capture the pollution before it escapes into the environment. If it doesn’t work, all the polluter needs to do is to show that it is sucking or removing the errant carbon from the atmosphere.
The carbon market business has been a speculator’s paradise, with scant transparency or integrity. This state of play allowed carbon cowboys and dealers to trade in phantom carbon or even forests, leaving investors in limbo.
With the matter now rolling over to COP29, observers now wonder if the tide of land and forest trading desks across Africa would be stemmed.
In the run up to COP28, there were reports of deals aimed at selling off huge swathes of African territories to be utilised as carbon sinks. There are reports of nations inking memoranda of understanding or agreements to cede huge segments of their territories for carbon credits. Zimbabwe has put 20% of its forests on the chopping block, Zambia and Liberia are extending 10% while Tanzania is said to offer 8 million hectares of forest.
Nigeria’s Niger State offered to sell 760,000 hectares of land to Blue Carbon, a UAE carbon focused company, for afforestation programme that would see the planting of one billion trees.
The thing to note is that the lands or forests are not sold in perpetuity. The leases have stipulated years over which the investor would find ways of securing the carbon in the land, sea or forest. They could also engage in carbon farming through, for example, clearing the territory and then creating a tree plantation which should be seen as a colonial euphemism for monoculture cash cropping. The investor farms carbon and owns the credit accruing from there.
The investor can use the carbon to offset his polluting activity at home and can even sell off some to help others offset their polluting activities. The investor can count a carbon sink in Africa as part of their Nationally Determined Contributions actions. The country that sold its territory may not do so.
Climate justice
Having climate justice in quotes says a lot about the mindset of the nations with regard to the disproportionate climate change impact on vulnerable communities, territories and nations. The COP26 outcome document did not place climate justice in quotes, but added that it was only important to some. In other words, climate justice is not something of universal concern. COP28 avoided that blatant disregard of the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), a clear climate justice principle in the climate convention.
In keeping with the general wordsmithing approach of the COPs, the principle and reality was now placed in harmless quotes.
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